A Leicester team has taken pride of place in an international Formula 1 aerodynamics competition.

Team Mansell, supervised by Dr Aldo Rona, senior lecturer in the Department of Engineering, and Professor Ivor Annetts, Royal Academy of Engineering Visiting Professor in Motorsport Aerodynamics, won the inaugural race of the UniFi Motorsport 2015/16 season.

UniFi Motorsport was formed in 2014 to provide a range of support services to Engineering students seeking their first role in Motorsport Aerodynamic Design.

Winning aerodynamic design by a team of students at the University of Leicester - Team Mansell - in the inaugural race of the UniFi Motorsport international competition. Colour scale shows the surface distribution of the coefficient of static pressure over the car body. Image credit: Dr Aldo Rona

The Leicester student team fended off competitors from other universities and international teams from Italy and South Africa to snatch first place with their redesigned Formula 1 car body.

This consisted of a bespoke front wing (new cascade, turning vanes), a new barge board and sidepod vane, and rear wing and diffuser packages. The team used SolidWorks to design the new surfaces and Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) from TotalSim Ltd to evaluate and refine their aerodynamic performance.

The aerodynamic designs from all teams were tested on a simulated medium downforce circuit, analogous to Race 5 of the Formula 1 calendar, on Bramble, and Team Mansell won this sprint race with the lap time of 1’32.68’’.

Dr Rona, Senior Lecturer in the Thermofluids Research Group at Leicester, said: “I was delighted to see Team Mansell topping the scoreboard at the inaugural race. This achievement is testimony to their hard work and to the mentoring that they received, by having a RAEng Visiting Professor in Motorsport Aerodynamics on board.”

Team Mansell consists of fourth year MEng students at the University of Leicester: Amar Patel (team leader), Harnish Rathod, Mmoloki A Machacha, Sahil Patel, and Haroon Habib. They were delighted by the good news and were congratulated by the Head of College, Professor Martin Barstow.